When does Renaissance philosophy end, and Early Modern philosophy begin? Do Renaissance philosophers have something in common, which distinguishes them from Early Modern philosophers? And ultimately, what defines the modernity of the Early Modern period, and what role did the Renaissance play in shaping it? The answers to these questions are not just chronological. This book challenges traditional constructions of these periods, which partly reflect the prejudice that the Renaissance was a literary and artistic phenomenon, rather than a philosophical phase. The essays in this book investigate how the legacy of Renaissance philosophers persisted in the following centuries through the direct encounters of subsequent generations with Renaissance philosophical texts. This volume treats Early Modern philosophers as joining their predecessors as ‘conversation partners’: the ‘conversations’ in this book feature, among others, Girolamo Cardano and Henry More, Thomas Hobbes and Lorenzo Valla, Bernardino Telesio and Francis Bacon, René Descartes and Tommaso Campanella, Giulio Cesare Vanini and the anonymous Theophrastus redivivus.

The 14 essays in this volume look at both the theory and practice of monarchical governments from the Thirty Years War up until the time of the French Revolution. Contributors aim to unravel the constructs of ‘absolutism’ and ‘monarchism’, examining how the power and authority of monarchs was defined through contemporary politics and philosophy.

Witchcraft, Witch-hunting, and Politics in Early Modern England offers a wide-ranging and original overview of the subject of witchcraft and its place in English society, covering the period from the beginning of witch trials in the early years of the reign of Elizabeth I through to the repeal of the Witchcraft Statute in 1736. In contrast to other approaches to the subject, which have tended to focus on the origins of witchcraft in gender and/orsocio-economic explanations, this volume situates belief in witchcraft and witch-hunting within the context of the political and religious debates of the period, shedding new light on the subject through a series oforiginal case studies based on extensive archival research.